Probably The End

Just figured I'd give a quick explanation. A friend of mine had a post come back on him in a bad way. Ended up with the police involved and him losing his job. Happened awhile back but I didn't know the actual details up until a couple months back. When I found out it made me rethink the public blog. I don't need anything like that happening! Wasn't even something he did wrong. Just people reading to much into things. Something that could've just as easily happened to me. No thanks!

Thanks for reading for the last few years! Hope it was at least interesting...

Been A Few Days

I'm still here and still trucking. Just been really busy lately. It's been non-stop since I took time off in Chicago.

Currently I'm in Irving, TX at the yard. I've got a 4 stop LTL load leaving out tonight. 500 out and then another 500 miles back. Goes great with the 1500 I already have this week. Then it's off for my daughters birthday.

That's it, just wanted to put something up so people knew I wasn't dead or something!

Great Time

As I mentioned before, I took the weekend off for a concert. It was by far one of the best shows I've ever been too! Got to catch up with an old friend for a couple days too. All in all it was a pretty good weekend!

Monday morning I found myself waiting around for a load. Sent a message and called and still nothing. Finally around 11 they sent me a load. Pickup at noon about 30 miles away in Chicago Heights and take it to Weyauwega, WI for tuesday morning. Pretty crappy load really. Got it knocked out pretty easily though.

The next one wasn't scheduled to pickup until 6pm. I was dreading sitting around all day waiting to load. Just for grins I decided to call the customer and play dumb and see if it was loaded. She told me it wasn't but they would load it early. That worked out well. I told her I could be there in about 45 minutes. They had me loaded and on my way shortly after that.

This load is going to Houston for Friday morning. It would have been kind of tight on time but the 10 hour early loading helped out. Now I think I'll get to Houston sometime thursday morning.

That's it for tonight! I need to get some sleep.

New Phone

As some of you know Sunday 10/30 was my birthday. I decided to buy a new phone for myself. The old one was only 18 months old. The plastic housing was breaking down one side of it. I've super glued it enough that I couldn't anymore. It was either keep it like it was or pay the $100 insurance deductible for a new one. I ended up just using my discount at sprint and buying the htc evo 3d.  Nice phone! That's why the lack of posts this week. I've been tinkering with it nonstop. 

I'm now in Chicago on a mini vacation. Taking 4 days off here and going over to Grand Rapids, MI to see a concert. My favorite band Five Finger Death Punch along with Hatebreed,  All That Remains, and Rains. Should be a great show! I chose this concert so I could go with a friend of mine. Heading out that way tomorrow. Until then I'm just messing around here. Picked up my rental car a little bit ago. Now just doing the usual laundry and walmart trip.

That's about it. Don't expect much else until I'm back to work Monday. Maybe I'll remember to get some pictures from the show.

Still Here

I'm still here somewhere. Actually I'm in Elkton, MD for the night. I've been fighting a lack of internet signal most of the week. Then when I finally got it back I had a tight load coming back east. That left me running pretty hard and tired at night. Just haven't found the time to make a post.

I finally have a load with some time on it. This one is 995 miles and three full days to do it in. I don't have to be in Green Bay, WI until monday night at 6pm. Luckily thought this customer will take it whenever I get there. Looking like I'll drop in sometime sunday morning and get it unloaded. Then I'm off until monday.

That's about all I can come up with tonight. I need to get some sleep. Though I'll probably lay here and listen to Game 7 of the World Series first. No FOX station here to watch it on!

Midwest

My local load went alright. Had a little trouble at the first stop. It was still a little dark and I saw the sign saying "<-- receiving" but couldn't really tell if it meant the first or second driveway. Both of them were within 100' or so of each other and the sign was a few feet past the first. The first driveway had all the car parking up front. One thing to avoid in a big truck is the car entrance. You can find yourself in a bad situation if you turn into the wrong entrance. Especially if you have to back out onto a major road!

I drove past the first and went to the second. I'd look at the place on Google maps and the docks were on the side of the second entrance so I figured that had to be it. Well, I got up there and saw "Do Not Enter -- One Way!" Oops! Had to drive right on by that one too. That left me searching for somewhere to turn around.

Getting turned around is a little more complicated when you're 75' long. It's not like a car where you can whip in anywhere and do a uturn. I've been in situations before where I've literally had to drive to the next town 20 some miles away to get turned around. This time luckily about a mile down the road was an ungated dock area for some other place. I got turned around and went back. Turns out I was supposed to go in the car entrance and they have a small dirt lot at the back to park in. Then a driveway around the back side of the building to get over to the docks when you get assigned one.

The second stop went really quickly. It was to an exporter shipping stuff to Bermuda. The load was mostly cheese and a few pallets of Jell-o. When I got there the guy came out and told me to back on in and that he was happy to see me. He said they had been so bored lately. We got to talking about how the export business is dying off more and more. I was his only truck for the day. The place was pretty big. I'm sure at some point it was a rather busy place. Now it was just old and run down. It's sad to see!

On to the next load. A descent place actually. I pulled in and they had me loaded and out the gate in about 30 minutes. It was still pretty early so I knocked out about 300 miles of the 650 before shutting down. Then the last little bit went pretty quick friday morning. That put me 30 miles from my saturday afternoon appointment.

Sadly I managed to pick a truckstop with a very weak signal for internet and zero tv signal. Sitting for 24 hours with next to nothing to do is beyond boring! Thankfully Pilot usually has a $5 dvd bin. This one had a 3 for $12 going so I bought a few that I hadn't seen before. At least it was something to do while waiting around.

I got a little upset over all the northeast loads and slow loads so I asked for something going to the midwest. I halfway expected a Denver or something in that area. What I got was a 4 stop load to North Dakota. Pretty good load actually. One stop in Fargo Monday morning. Then one in Bismarck monday afternoon and two there tuesday morning. I got it picked up last night and drove about 100 miles. Just enough to clear all of the Chicago area traffic. I'm sitting around at the Wisconsin state line right now waiting on my break to be done so I can roll out again.

After that load they have me set up to deadhead 300 miles to somewhere in South Dakota for a load going to Allentown, PA. Another good load. That load came across friday afternoon. It deliver friday morning next week. That means I had a full week of loads planned on me ahead of time. I like when they do that. It's nice to know what my whole week is going to be!

I think that covers it all for today! I'm off to grab some breakfast and get ready to go.

No Appointment

I got the load from Green Bay delivered monday and tuesday without any issue. It was a pretty nice trip really. I got to take the New York Thruway across the top part of the state. Upstate New York is actually pretty nice. Nothing like the craziness of NYC.

After that I had to head up to Needhan Heights (Boston), MA and load at Coca Cola. My appointment was for 3:30pm so I had to kill three hours on the way up there. They loaded me just quick enough to have me leaving at 5:00 exactly. Trying to leave Boston at 5pm pretty much sucks! Traffic was horrible as usual. I drove about 225 of the 400 miles on that load last night. That got me through New York City and south of the whole area.

Got up this morning and did that last 175 miles. My delivery time showed to be 7am to Noon first come first serve. I got there and was promptly told to leave because I didn't have an appointment. Somehow the CSR's screwed up. The 7-12 was their open hours. They were supposed to have made an appointment. After sitting around for an hour dispatch finally decided to have me take it 170 miles backwards and drop it on the yard.

That set me up for a 92 mile 2 stop load for in the morning. Both drops are in southern New Jersey. Shouldn't be anything too bad. After that I go 25 miles over to my pickup. That load goes 650 miles by saturday afternoon. 2 and a half days for that. Not sure why I keep getting these crap loads all of a sudden. We're going to have to have a discussion about it pretty quick.

That's all for today. I need to get some sleep so I can get going early in the morning.

Shop

The plan to get the truck into the shop worked out well. I got there friday afternoon after bringing a load of scrap paper from Michigan. I got everything wrote up and then had to do my quarterly meeting in the office. I hate doing the meeting but on the good side it's considering safety training and gets me a discount on my car insurance. On the truck I wrote up 5 items...

1. APU leaking coolant -- Which was fixed with a new water pump
2. APU not charging --- Fixed by repairing the broken wire I couldn't see
3. Side skirt loose and bouncing around --- Fixed with some new screws and a few zip ties
4. One tire pressure sensor not working --- Not fixed. They just reprogrammed the monitor to show as if that one didn't exist instead of showing a fault.
5. The PM --- Standard oil change and lube job done

I opted for a night in the Ramada last night. It's easier to do that than to sit in the lounge all night waiting for them to finish the truck. It's free for me so that's another added bonus. Then of course the onsite bar & grill pretty much seals the deal! Had a pretty good evening hanging out down there and watching baseball with some other drivers.

The shuttle brought me back around 10am this morning. I went straight to the truck and climbed in. Turned the key over and got nothing. The batteries were so dead the gauges and onboard computer wouldn't even come on. I was able to get one of the mechanics to bring out the jumpstart cart. It's basically just a set of batteries on a dolly. Had me up and going pretty quick.

My load picked up around the corner. I grabbed an empty trailer and went to go get it. The yard man pointed out that I had a leak flowing pretty good. Sure enough it was coolant pouring out. I hooked up to the load and got it back to the yard as quick as I could. The leak was coming from the water filter gasket area. That much I could tell. It was a brand new filter installed during the service last night. I figured maybe they just didn't tighten it down. The mechanic brought a new filter and popped the old one off. Turns out the metal where the gasket meets had started to corrode a little. He scraped it off to a smooth surface and put the new filter on. Good to go!

Finally I was ready to go. After all that I just couldn't find my motivation so I only drove about 2 hours. Made it just south of Milwaukee to Racine, WI. This leaves me 600 miles from my first stop in Buffalo, NY at 11am monday. After that it's 400 miles to the next stop in Northampton, MA sometime tuesday. No appointment set for that one yet.

That's it for tonight. I'm going to kick back and watch the Rangers game!

Repairs & Tolls

I guess I left off on the crappy load going to Massachusetts. That one was pretty easy. I could've been up there Saturday morning but I decided to opt for taking it easy. Took saturday off all together in Florence, SC. Then sunday I finished up the majority of the trip. I was there bright and early monday morning. That particular customer opens the gates at 1am and has lots of parking for drivers to sleep. I pulled in about 2am so that I could get a full break in while there.

My next load picked up about 120 miles away in Northampton, MA at 4pm. That's why I wanted to get the full break in. It let me drive over there and get loaded and then have enough time to make it on down to Virginia. Things took a downward turn when I got around back to the dock. They have you leave the doors closed and the reefer running while you wait. When they came out to my truck to have me back in the truck was dead. I tried for an hour to get it jumped off the reefer unit with no success. Even with the APU unit running the batteries still wouldn't take a charge.

I called in to breakdown and they sent a guy out. He took everything apart and found that I had 2 batteries that had exploded (cracked apart) and that the other 2 were leaking and not far behind. Yes, big trucks have 4 batteries if you didn't know that. He replaced all 4 for a grand total of $935. Road repair is an expensive thing. $85 and hour for labor, $1.50 a mile round trip to come out, $75 fee for it being a holiday (Columbus Day), and the batteries at something like $135 each. He charged 3 hours of labor for something that took about an hour to do. Got me fixed up though!

I loaded up there and headed south. Made it across the George Washington bridge and into New Jersey where I shut down for a break. That was my main goal. The GW bridge is one of the main truck routes to get down through NYC and on south. They charge a whopping $65 for a truck ($12 for a car) to cross this decrepit old bridge. It's insane! I watched a news special one day saying they make in the area of $5 million a day off that bridge. Tolls are crazy up through that whole area!

Just to make the trip up/back I had ,

• Baltimore Tunnel
• Susquahanna River Bridge
• Delaware Memorial Bridge/Turnpike
• New Jersey Turnpike
• George Washington Bridge
• New York Turnpike

My EZ Pass thing covers it for me so I don't know all the amounts exactly. Some of the displays at the booths show "Paid" and some show "$12.34 Paid" so I know the prices. Last time I was up through there without and EZ Pass was during my time with Arnold. I took $200 in cash with me and ended up having to hit an ATM on the Jersey Turnpike on the way out due to the costs. It totaled somewhere around $270 if I recall. Now of course all those charges get recouped in the freight transportation cost. Then of course the customer just charges for for the product to recoup their costs for the transportation. It's a downhill slope that just ends up costing the consumer in the end.

My next load, full of tolls again, picks up whenever I can get to Mount Crawford, VA. It should be loaded and waiting for me. That one delivers tomorrow in Somethingsvilletown, MI. A suburb of Detroit, I just forgot the name. After that we generally end up loading scrap paper going back to WI. Hoping that's what happens this time. Even with the new batteries my truck is still near dead in the morning. My APU seems to not be charging at all now. Truck has a PM due on it too so maybe I can get all this done at once!

That's all for today. I'm off to take a short nap while I wait to be unloaded here.

Crap Load

The load to Sarasota, FL went pretty well. I had to deliver at 4am this morning. They had me in a door and empty by about 4:15 and then left me sitting there until 6:45 waiting on the paperwork. I would've normally been mad but instead this time I was sleeping and didn't really notice the long wait.

After that I had to pickup a load in Umatilla, FL. This one is a 1270 mile load but doesn't deliver until Monday morning at 8am. I'll probably be there saturday morning. That gives me time to get a restart on my hours. Then I can go at it hard again next week!

That's all for tonight. I'm in Ormond Beach for the night. Going to lay down and watch some tv.